3M class action lawsuit overview:
- Who: A three-judge panel of 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges have vacated class certification and instructed a lower court to dismiss a 3M class action lawsuit.
- Why: The appellate court determined the plaintiff failed to show that the PFAS in his bloodstream were actually manufactured by 3M and the other defendants and that they would eventually cause him to become sick.
- Where: The 3M class action lawsuit has been remanded back to Ohio federal court.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has vacated a district court’s certification order of a putative class of 11 million Ohio residents who allege 3M and other companies manufactured and sold products with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) that put their health at risk, Law360 reports.
On Nov. 27, the three-judge appellate panel determined that plaintiff Kevin Hardwick, an Ohio firefighter, did not know which companies manufactured the chemicals found in his bloodstream. Further, the judges concluded that Harwick could not know if those chemicals would eventually cause him to become sick.
“Seldom is so ambitious a case filed on so slight a basis,” the opinion reads.
Writing for the panel, U.S. Circuit Judge Raymond Kethledge explained that Hardwick’s bloodstream contains trace quantities of five chemicals “which are themselves part of a family of thousands of chemicals whose usage is nearly ubiquitous in modern life.”
“To allege simply that these defendants manufactured or otherwise distributed PFAS, therefore, is patently insufficient to support a plausible inference that any of them bear responsibility for the particular PFAS in Hardwick’s blood,” Judge Kethledge wrote.
Courts differ on whether plaintiff established injury in 3M class action lawsuit
When he filed the 3M class action lawsuit in 2018, Hardwick reportedly sought to represent a nationwide class, but U.S. District Judge Edmond A. Sargus Jr. narrowed certification last year to Ohio residents with a blood concentration of 0.5 parts per trillion of any PFAS.
Sargus determined that Hardwick had sufficiently showed that he had standing to sue the 10 chemical companies.
Hardwick says he was exposed to PFAS during his 40-year career as a firefighter through firefighting foams and contaminated equipment. He claims the PFAS in his bloodstream put him at heightened risk of disease.
The chemical company defendants appealed the class certification ruling, arguing that Hardwick did not actually have standing to sue them.
Harwick “wants prospective relief only, but he has no evidence of a ‘certainly impending’ threatened injury that would give a federal court the authority to grant prospective relief,” they argued.
The 6th Circuit vacated the district court’s certification order and remanded the case with instructions to dismiss the 3M class action lawsuit due to lack of jurisdiction.
What do you think of the 3M class action lawsuit? Join the discussion in the comments.
Hardwick is represented by Robert A. Bilott, Aaron M. Herzig, David J. Butler, Jonathan N. Olivito and William E. Braff of Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP.
The 3M class action lawsuit is Kevin Harwick v. 3M Co., et al., Case No. 22-3765, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit.
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